Fairest Night, Longest Night
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPBZ, one-shot. Harry and Blaise celebrate their first Yule together. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Fairest Night, Longest Night  
**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.  
**Pairings: **Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini  
**Content Notes:** Fluff, established relationship, present tense  
**Rating: **PG  
**Wordcount**: 1100 words  
**Summary: **Harry and Blaise celebrate their first Yule together.  
**Author's Notes: **This is one of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics for this year.

**Fairest Night, Longest Night**

"Now light the second candle."

Harry does so carefully, his fingers trembling a little. He has nothing in them but the fire, cupped and shining in his hand. Blaise has explained that the candles for the night of the winter solstice need to be lit with magic alone.

Wandless magic. _Pure _magic. Harry scowled suspiciously at Blaise the first time he spoke that word, but Blaise clasped his elbows and smiled at him.

"I promise, Harry, it's only the old way of referring to it. It has nothing to do with blood. I think I've told you by now that I don't care about that."

Harry has to admit, as he watches Blaise lean in to light the third candle, the one standing on the right of the hearth, that that's true. In fact, Blaise has no politics at all. That's what infuriates Hermione the most about him. She'll argue with Blaise, or try, and sometimes pounce when she finds something that makes him angry, only to find that he doesn't get angry about it outside of that one individual thing.

Harry finds it restful. It's one of the reasons he and Blaise could fall in love in a fortnight, when the Auror Department sent Harry to Italy on an extended (forced) holiday. Everyone else, Harry has to ask them about their views on blood, and their side of the war, and how they feel about dating a celebrity.

Blaise just doesn't _care. _To him, people matter if they're kind to him and his. The war was an annoying interruption in a life of knowledge and pleasure. And any time someone tries to come up and gape at Harry when they're on a date, or ask for his autograph, or do anything else that might embarrass someone who regularly sleeps with the Boy-Who-Lived, Blaise is so good at a look of pointed disdain that he makes them flee. Sometimes crying.

Hermione disapproves of that, too. Harry is just glad that he has someone so firmly on his side.

Another thing that Blaise cares passionately about are the old rites of sun and seasons. Which is why they're practicing the rites of the winter solstice. Harry leans down and uses the fire still shimmering in his hands to light the candle to the left of the hearth. Blaise's smile is more dazzling than it is.

"Now," Blaise says. He hesitates a moment, and Harry moves over to stand in front of him and extend his hands. Blaise clasps them, but he's still looking at Harry hesitantly in the light of the fire. "Do you think you're able to praise the darkness?"

"It gave me you."

Blaise shuts his mouth on whatever words would have followed the first ones, and nods once. Then he closes his eyes. Harry does the same, and sees points of flight flicker to life, floating on the backs of his eyelids. He knows they're the candles and the fire. Blaise told him about this.

He just didn't think he would actually get to see it.

"Powers of night and darkness," Blaise says, his voice ringing and drifting in odd patterns, so that Harry thinks he could hear an invisible chorus somewhere behind him. "This is the fairest night, the longest night. On this night the sun rises away from the earth, and all who think to shelter behind him are exposed." Blaise's voice is rising, his words growing more passionate. "But all those who accept the shelter of the night and the cloud, the fog and the storm, stand cloaked in their power."

The points of light on the backs of Harry's eyelids move closer together. Soon there's only one blazing pinprick there, and Harry can imagine it as the sun, the way Blaise said he should, shimmering alone in the darkness of space.

"This is the night of our strength! Our grace!" Blaise pauses, and it takes Harry a moment to remember to speak the words Blaise entrusted to him.

"Our love," he says.

The pinprick of light glittering on the back of his eyelids surges up and then vanishes. Harry straightens up, feeling as if he's run a long race. Blaise is standing in front of him, hands still extended, and the room around them is dark, candles and fire extinguished.

Yet Harry can still see him. He blinks and stares in wonder through purple-tinged vision, and Blaise, with a smile, whispers, "_Nox pulcherrima, nox longissima._"

The darkness around them breaks and whirls, and Harry and Blaise are standing in the center of a ring of light that rises from the floor, as if they're in the middle of a chandelier. The candles, or whatever else the flames are made of, bow to them, and Blaise turns and bows in return. Harry hastily copies him.

"And the light returns," Blaise says. "Even as the winter solstice passes, the days lengthen. But always the darkness is there, waiting to be acknowledged. And it will begin to return with the brilliance of the summer solstice, which blinds those who cannot see. We honor our grace and our power."

"Our love," Harry says, and the lights leap up like white fireworks, and whirl in midair the way the darkness did, and vanish.

The silence that's left pours peace into Harry, in a way that he's never felt before this night. He catches his breath and looks at Blaise. Blaise is smiling at him in a way that makes Harry feel, for the first time, that he's seeing to the very heart of him, even deeper than the night he met him dancing wildly in a plaza in Italy, honoring the spring.

"That's it," Blaise whispers, and Harry doesn't think he really means the end of the ritual. He leans forwards, his hand sliding down Harry's face, his eyes distant. Harry does his best to relax, and then Blaise kisses him.

The kiss warms Harry down to his toes, like the best mug of hot chocolate, and he knows that part of it is the aura of magic that's lingering in the air. He smiles, and continues smiling as Blaise pulls back and considers him carefully.

"What do you think?" Blaise asks.

Harry laughs aloud. "I think that the winter solstice is my favorite holiday celebration." Granted, he's only seen six of them with Blaise so far, since they celebrated the summer solstice and autumn equinox, Beltane and Lughnasadh and Samhain, before this, but it doesn't much matter, Harry thinks, content. None of them made him feel like this.

Blaise draws Harry into the crook of his arm and says simply, "Good."

As they go into the next room to begin on the feast that the house-elves prepared, Harry feels love and peace mingling together in him, light as a candle flame, deep as the darkness.

**The End. **


End file.
